23rd August

Napoleon wrote to his adopted son Eugene de Beauharnais today in 1810, saying 'My principle is: France before everything.'
Well, everything except grabbing everybody else's country, selling his own troops down the river, Creole women and, as the great Sellar and Yeatman put it in 1066 And All That, 'standing like that.'

In other news ...

Alaric and his Visigoths destroyed Rome today in 410, ending seven centuries of culture and civilization. Actually, that's not quite true. There was a great deal of culture and civilization outside the Roman Empire and in terms of their cruelty and rapacious greed for territory, the Romans were the Nazis of the ancient world.

30th May

Today in 1990, France banned the import of British beef in case it carried the 'mad cow' virus. This was all a storm in a teacup of course, as food scares always are. But it was only tit-for-tat, really. We'd stopped importing their horses by 1565 and it was payback time.

In other news ...
One of the most famous voices in cartoon history was heard for the first time today in 1908. Mel Blanc, better known as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, is reputed to have taken one look at the obstetrics team around his cot and said 'What's up, Doc?'

28th April

This was the day when the Allies got it wrong at Versailles in 1919. Britain, the USA and especially France demanded that Germany (who wasn't even called to the negotiating table) pay £6,600 million for having started World War One. Four things to note:

1. Germany didn't start World War One - Gavrilo Princip did.
2. Germany was broke and couldn't afford to pay reparations.
3. Woodrow Wilson the American President and John Maynard Keynes the economist wanted a much more affordable reparation settlement. They were ignored.
4. Georges Clemenceau - 'the tiger' - was a vengeful reprobate who consigned his own country to defeat and occupation twenty years later.

In other news ...
Benito Mussolini became yet another in a long line of dictators - Julius Caesar, Maximilien Robespierre, the Ceausescus, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Simon Cowell  (oops - typo! sorry!) - to meet their end stickily. It was 28 April 1945 and Il Duce and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were shot, kicked, spat at and hanged upside down for the benefit of the Italian mob and the cameras.

29th March

Back in 1886, Dr John Pemberton came out with a corker. It was March 29 and he thought the world - or at least Allanton, Georgia - was ready for a drink that could cure hysteria, the common cold and just about everything in between. It was an 'Esteemed Brain Tonic' (for esteemed brains only) and an 'Intellectual Beverage' (which is why the Mem and I drink it and Eight Eff Pee never touch the stuff). It was made from caffeine, syrup and Coca leaves. It was called - you guessed it - Syrup of Figs.
Lovely.

In other news ...
This one must float to the top in the What-Was-That-All-About stakes. Today in 1989, to commemorate two hundred years of mass guillotinings, President Francois Mitterand unveiled a glass 'thing' in front of the Louvre. Astonishingly, bearing in mind the scorn the pyramid drew, it's not only still there but actually featured in the movie The Da Vinci Code.

You couldn't make it up, could you? That's because Dan Brown did.

22nd February

Let's hear it for the Women of Mumbles Head - or at least, somewhere nearby. 212 years ago today, a French Frigate landed at Fishguard in Pembrokeshire.I should perhaps remind you of the following -

1. We were at war with France at the time.
2. The frigate's captain thought Wales was Ireland.
3. He was supposed to be linking up with a rebellion that had already failed weeks before. 

That said, his men were mean, armed and determined to carry out a bit of rape and pillage which have been soldiers' R&R for centuries. Along the beach they saw people advancing with red coats and black headgear and said (to themselves and each other) 'Merde! C'est l'Infanterie de l'Angleterre!' (S**t! British squaddies!). They were wrong in fact because these were Welsh fishwives in their traditional red shawls and black hats. They were far more terrifying than the regular army and the French ran for it. The Pembrokeshire Yeomanry (that's part time cavalry to you, Eight Tee Tea) waited until the coast was clear (literally) then galloped up with lots of cries of 'Huzzah!' and had the battle honour 'Fishguard' put on their accoutrements (that's bits and bobs to you, Twelve Aitch Why).

In other news ...
Jethro Tull died today in 1741. Nothing whatever to do with the 'music' industry, this was the guy who brought you such literary classics as Horse-Howing Husbandry (he was a stickler for alliteration) and Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation. Tull was not just a theorist, however; his horse-hoe really worked, as did his seed drill which planted seeds in neat rows, making a nonsense of the parable of the sower and ensuring that every seed planted actually grew. What was the response of farm labourers whose work was cut dramatically and whose families could now eat properly? They went on the rampage and smashed up Tull's machinery.

Ingrates!